Reborn
by AzumiRocks
Summary: The son of Red-X is just a regular teenage guy trying to live his life. But when his dad wants him to take over the crown of thorns against new Teen Titans, things get a little hectic. Having a crush on the Titan team leader can have that effect.
1. Reborn

**Okay, I'm a nerd. I tried to make this story on my last account two or three years ago (Kari-san) but I never seemed to get very far. Let's try this again shall we? Review and give me ideas....I'll give you a Wally West? Best. Superhero. EVER.**

**Reborn**

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With a rumbled, knelling creak, light sunk through musky darkness, dust particles dancing around in the rare ritual of illumination. The light crept up along old crooked ruts in the heavy mahogany planks. They seemed foreboding. Unwelcoming, and angry for the disrruption of this newfound threat.

He hadn't meant to open the door. He was just trying to abscond from his father for sneaking out that morning. But he had run right into him. Delved into something he didn't understand.

Pushing the door more with a sharp, defined eyebrow raised in curiosity a boy with mussy dark brown hair and pale skin frowned. He's just been on his way to his room. He'd gotten past his father. Somehow. Usually his father was a mastermind at hearing William when he came home late. It had to be past two in the morning, and being at a party all night had not been a good idea on his part. Something about the room he'd never seemed to notice inside his own house before however, was urging him inside like a creature too starved to drag, but too clever not to whisper sweet nothings. Coaxing him with promises of secrets he wouldn't want to hear. But the longing to know was too strong. Where had the door come from? It had never been in his hallway before. But that night it was just...There. Looming over him when he'd tripped over the rug. If he hadn't tripped, he probably never would have noticed it. It was just a normal looking door, in a normal looking house. Only his house couldn't be normal, and neither could the door because it had not existed before.

Ever.

Clopping against the hollow wood, his leather shoes snuffed out the sunny matrimony of disturbance and hope. Swallowing with difficultly, William narrowed obsidian eyes, brushing hair from his sloping face hesitantly. Raising hands out in uncertainty he exhaled deeply, brushing past the nearest wall, his calloused fingers trailing its surface. It was smooth, like glass...He would have suggested it to be a mirror but the entire wall felt that way. Some freakish mirror room? Turning around sharply with fleeting fear a clown would pop out holding a saw or something (horror movies were not his favorite) something caught the ankle of his legging. Intaking air he let out a gasp, stumbled backwards into the rock-hard wall with a groan, the door snapping shut behind him, drenching him in black hues.

Sitting up with a hissing pain, Will cracked his shoulderblade, trying to get some balance back. Why was he even in there? He was exausted and ancy from staying up so late at a party he hadn't even wanted to go to. Slapping a palm to the wall again, dim light caught his attention. All around the room, light was accumilating from deep within a place he couldn't see, like a furnice just beginning to ignite. Musky colors of tan and sienna sieged the room, a wardrobe and the wall he was against (which did turn out to just be a wall sized mirror) coming into view as enshrowded answers. Standing slowly, his eyes widened, time dropping to a still stand. Turning, his neck arched as he faced the opposite wall. It was covered in newspapers, old, tattered and dirt yellow. His exhilation left in grey trailing smoke, even though the room seemed to be emitting its own source of firelight and heat.

His voice shaking, quaking as his eyes darted from title to title, his eyes trapped in the wall of newspapers in front of him, Will backed up into the mirror wall, shaking his head. "What...." Yelling as the mirror burned into his back he bashed into the wardrobe to his left, panicking as something fell over his eyes with the sound of breaking glass. "No!" he yelled, throwing the soft fabric in front of him with both hands as fast as was possible for him. Breathing heavily, his chest heaving in and out, he stared, stiffening at the black skull encrypted mask. It held one slender red X across an eye....

"Oh my g-"

"Will."

"AH!" Turning around William stood pressed against the dresser, its curled handles digging into his back like needles as his father stood in the open doorway. He looked beat as his eyes slid over to the wall of Teen Titan news clippings. "Son." the old grey haired man began again, not looking at the frightened teen to his left. His broad shoulders were slouched, his eyes in a permanent decline of emotion. Especially that of the optimistic kind.

"We need to talk."


	2. A Nasty Recollect

**A Nasty Recollection**

Staring vividly at the old man across the dining room table, Will swallowed hard. He'd never seen his father look so mellow before. All his life, all his father had ever done was yell and order him around. Go faster, study harder, throw sooner, be better, better, better. Why did he look so broken? And what was with that mask? He felt like he already knew the answer, but there was no way his dad was...

"Son, I haven't been honest with you."

Leaning forward, the man's pale green eyes lifted to meet his son's stark black ones. His voice was weak.

"When I was your age, I was a different person then I am today. Or maybe that's just me, trying to trick myself again..."

Staring behind Will into the distance, silence crept in, crawling up Will's back along his spine, sliding over his chest and neck like a snake. The tension was killing him. He just wanted to jump up and tell him to stop whatever he was about to say. He didn't want to hear him. He didn't want to listen. Why was it that for seventeen years he'd been listening to his father? It was always like this! His father opened his mouth, and Will eagerly obeyed, searching, hoping for some sort of praise. But no. It was always about his dad. Will never got to say anything. Slumping his tight shoulders, Will kept his mouth shut. Again. His father came back to.

"I've been meaning to tell you this for a long time. I wanted to wait until you were eighteen, but I obviously can't now. It was a coincidence you found that room. I was going to have to tell you soon anyway, what with the things that have been happening."

Straightening, a dark, looming and overpowering sense seemed to fill his father's atmosphere, like he was simply filling an empty glass. His face was taut, and unreadable now.

"I used to be known as Red X."

Without even thinking Will laughed. Inside, something struck his nerves. The mask, the newspaper clippings-all real.

"You mean that brat the Titans talked about on the news?" His voice suggested that he wasn't taking anything his dad said seriously. Maybe he wasn't. If so, why had his arms started shaking?

"Yes." Standing, his father laced long calloused fingers together. "The reason I've been so hard on you since childhood was because I was training you to finish what I could not."

Will's arms went numb, his hands losing all feel. He forced out another laugh. It was harder than it had been the first time. "What are you talking about?" he asked stupidly. His father was in front of him now. Kneeling down, his father grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip, forcing him forward. He was stronger than Will remembered as he strained to stay away from his gritted teeth. As Will stared, wide eyed, into the man's face, his stomach flipped. Why couldn't he recognize his own father...?

"I didn't give up so that the Titans could get everything they ever wanted! I gave up so that Red X could live on. And you're going to finish what I started."

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**A prologue of sorts to chapter two. I really shouldn't be working on this because of finals, but hey. I felt inspired. Please read and review!**


	3. Ten Months Later

**10 Months Later**

"So, let me get this straight."

Turning sloped shoulders, a young girl with raven hair pulled into a high pony tail bit her bottom lip. Blinking long lashes, sharp emerald eyes cut through the space between her and two adults with a bored expression.

"I get the T-Tower, but I don't get any partners."

Taking a step forward, one of the adults came into view. He had long, black, straight hair like the youthful girl in front of him, and a midnight blue suit with the span of black wings across his chest. A mask couldn't hide his dark, slanting eyes, nor his amusement at his daughters reaction to her 'coming of age' gift. It was special for a girl, or anyone for that matter, to be turning eighteen.

"Just think of the Titan Tower like a....Car."

Nightwing had to force down a less than mature smile.

"You get the car itself, but car seats? Bobble heads and dice? A new engine and transmission. Those are all things you have to work for yourself, so you can learn about how it functions, and know how to and not to treat it."

Holding his hand, a woman with tanned, inhuman skin, vibrant red hair, and eyes as stark as the girls gave a lovely smile.

"I just love it when you use metaphors like that" she whispered, chuckling. Turning his strong jaw, he gave her a chaste kiss. "I'll try to use them more often" he muttered. Both turned back to an extremely disgusted daughter.

"Don't give us that look Jalen-Star. You said you wanted your own place when you graduated-this is it." Nightwing said, raising a dark brow, taking parental control.

"Well, yeah, but I never said-"

"I also distinctly recall you bugging us for seven years about joining the family business instead of college. It was hard enough letting you have this place when MIT was begging at our front door."

Pointing a finger up like the sharpest weapon available, Jalen opened her mouth, before halting...Exhaling, she dropped her hand.

"Yeah, okay, fine. So what, I find my own partners?" she drawled. "Sounds easy enough."

Star-Fire, the woman besides her husband, chuckled again. "Be careful though. Sometimes, people aren't what they seem. You don't just want partners Jalen-Star. You want_ friends_."

"You know mom, I miss those days when I was a kid, where you couldn't put your thoughts into words in the right order. You remember those days?"

Jalen-Star was the daughter of Nightwing and Star-Fire. They often helped the WatchTower bound Justice League nowadays, but when the two of them had been even younger than Jalen, they had been on a team known as the Teen Titans. Fighting crime, doing good, romping around without parents telling them what to do day in and day out. The stories of Robin and the Titan's adventures kept her alive and wide awake as a child. She'd wanted to be just like them as long as she could remember. When she turned fourteen she even ran away from home, convinced she'd step down the street at night and then suddenly-Bam! She'd find her team, and they'd be the best there ever was. Of course her parents found her about twenty minutes in. It sucks that they're super sometimes.

Like how they always have people out to get them. She couldn't go to a public school like most. Nightwing tried to take her to this ubber famous private academy, but after her brilliance blew up the laboratory and the east wing, the school said that place was too 'structured' for her, and she needed 'open space' so they wouldn't piss off two superhero parents.

So she was homeschooled. In the WatchTower. They'd leave her there with a pile of school books, and whenever anyone was free, they'd sit down to help as best they could. Flash had been her favorite teacher. She used to, and still sometimes did, call him Uncle Speedster. He came over to their house out of spandex from time to time with his wife, Jinx, who was the famous hero Lady Luck in Central City, and one of his sons (twins, the other was still at the private academy she'd blown up). God, Jalen hated Wally's son though. He was a year older than her, and he bullied her all OVER the place when they were kids, running around, driving her INSANE...She hasn't seen him in several years though.

She could still recall one day at the WatchTower when Batman was the only one not on a mission, sitting there across from her, watching her work on algebra, and waiting for her to ask for help because he'd analysed her entire worksheet and knew she'd gotten all her problems wrong. The most. Terrifying. Man. Alive. He still gave her goosebumps, popping up out of nowhere...

Hearing a jangle, Jalen looked up from her trail of thought to see a ring of keys in her face. Wide eyed, she looked past them to her father, Nightwing.

"Star" he started. He only called her Star when he was serious.

"If I give you these, you know what you're comitting yourself to...Don't you?"

Jalen inhaled slowly...Setting her jaw she clenched her teeth, curling her fingers into fists at her side. "Yes." she said with a determined stare, her eyes locked on his.

Maybe that wasn't the answer he was looking for. Slowly, his face gave away a hint of something. Something she'd never seen before....Worry? But not. She'd never seen weakness in her father before. Her mother was a clutz, every emotion written on her face. Jalen took after her father. She didn't like to let the whole world know what she was thinking.

The expression died away, and he sighed.

"Be a better leader than I was."

Tossing her the keys, Jalen caught them with ease. They felt cool in her hands. Cool, and new. Foreign. She was a Titan.....She was on her way to becoming what she had wanted to be her entire life....She felt numb butterflies soar inside of her, fighting to escape, to see, to feel what she was feeling; what she had in her hand. She had Titans Tower. She looked back up at her parents.

"Be careful" was all her father said. Spoken like a champ.

Star-Fire couldn't take it anymore. Running up, she held her daughter close, fighting back tears. "Send us messages! And write! And email us! And call us!"

Choking, Jalen nodded, rasping for air. Her mother was incredibly strong. INCREDIBLY, strong. Letting go, Star-Fire sniffled, stepping back. "Well, we won't come inside with you and ruin all the surprises...." Very near sobbing, Star-Fire lifted off the ground, and gently touched Nightwings shoulder. Nodding to her, he got onto a sleek black motorcycle...She'd seen him buying another one of those things down town a few days ago. Hopefully that mean the Tower wasn't her only big surprise.... Waving as they left, she stood in silence, alone, on the Titan Island. The island that stood in the middle of Jump City on it's channel, waiting for injustice to show itself and be heard after over twenty years of solitude....This was the best day of her life. Nothing could ruin this.

Opening the large metal doors, lights lit up around her. Nothing.

Seeing movement, she frowned as the doors closed behind her. Something was flying towards her from up high. A fly? A bee, a...No, it had to be a bird. Blinking at a pelican swooping towards her, she gave a confused, disturbed expression. "What the-" Suddenly the pelican was gone, and something much bigger ran into her, screaming "HIMYNAMESPETER!" before her head met the floor.

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**Okay, I kind of had some fun with this chapter. I decided to mix in some Justice League with this, because in the Teen Titan series, they had some baddie tighters too. Why can't I have some? So, ten months later. What's happened to William? And God forbid-WHO IS PETER? Thanks for reading and please please please review! Stuff like that (and tips) keep me going!**


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